ContentStrategy

This very cool tool from Richard Baxter and the Builtvisible team helps you plan your content strategy intelligently, using keyword research and estimating your audience size. Their description of the tool is “Easily consolidate trending news from across the web, and find inspiration for your research topics quickly andeasily”.

FWE allows you to check on or keep track of a set of terms over time, and helps you get a sense for what type of content gets a lot of mentions, shares, and links. Many more uses, features keep gettingadded.

Online ReputationManagement

PPC

Note: although I’ve been AdWords certified for years and have run some small campaigns, I don’t necessarily consider myself a “PPC guy” or expert (we have those here, though) – so my list of PPC tools is not particularly extensive, to put it nicely. Feel free to send me your non-commercialsuggestions to add here via Twitter (@dportney) –thanks!

RankChecking

The relative importance of checking rankings is debatable. In fact, it was at @SEMpdx SearchFest industry conference where I heard my first full-blown rant from @ConradSaam about the uselessness of checking rank (he recommended focusing on traffic and conversions) – that was 4 years ago and before the Google Hummingbird algorithm update and before Google started rewriting queries based on perceived user intent. I’ve used and still use rank checkers, but the effectiveness of SEO strategies based on keyword ranking really seems to be dying if not already dead. That said, here’s some tools I’veused:

I haven’t used AL in awhile, but have used their service and it’s generally very good – I’m sure they’ve made improvements since (this is a paidtool).

SiteAnalysis

I love doing site analysis. Whether it’s a relatively quick SEO Triage, a comprehensive SEO Audit, or even a full-blown SEO Strategy Playbook, conducting a thorough site analysis and providing recommendations is one of my favorite tasks in SEO-land. Here are some tools that I use and that will make your analyses faster, easier, and morecomprehensive.

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